Menu

Environmental Restoration: Quiet Heroes Appear in the Wake of Disaster

When the twin towers of the World Trade Center were attacked in New York City on September 11, 2001, when an EF-5 tornado carved a path of destruction through a mile-long stretch of Joplin, when flood waters destroyed New Orleans – Environmental Restoration was there to clean up what was left behind by Mother Nature.

Founded in 1997 by a group of five managing partners in St. Louis, Environmental Restoration is a remediation contractor that provides services to federal, state, and local agencies, and private sector clients nationwide from regional offices throughout the United States and Canada.

“We’re the largest disaster response company in St. Louis that no one has heard of,” says Tom Fuhrhop, senior project manager.

Debris left behind by a disaster or accident can’t always just go into a trash can or, ultimately, to the landfill. Solid waste can include everyday trash, but many items left in the wake of a disaster contain components that make them hazardous and unsafe to place into a landfill. Items such as white goods (appliances including refrigerators, washers, and dryers), e-waste (computers and electronics), and liquids (paints and household chemicals) cannot be placed into commercial landfills due to chemicals that may leech out into the groundwater and contaminate the surrounding area. For example, when white goods are scrapped, they need to be neutralized by having the Freon taken out of them and any valuable metal removed for recycling or reuse.

Yard waste, such as limbs and fallen trees, cannot go into landfills because of their size, weight, and bulk, so they must be recycled or disposed of in other ways. Environmental Restoration has a team of experts who handle this type of cleanup.

Everyday Accidents

Separate divisions within Environmental Restoration handle different tasks. The commercial emergency response division is different from the government division, which handles assignments from the EPA and contracts for those jobs. Environmental Restoration has become the largest EPA response contractor in the country.

When a large truck accident occurs on a roadway, the debris and any spilled gasoline or oil has to be expertly removed. The Environmental Restoration staff is trained in the safest ways to remove this waste to prevent potential ground and water contamination. The scenario is not as rare as you might think. Environmental Restoration receives about six calls for assistance every day from all across the country.

Environmental Restoration also responds to smaller scale accidents at private businesses and companies that require specialized cleanup. Annually, the company cleans up about 1,700 hazardous material accidents nationwide, and emergency crews are available to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Acts of God and Terrorism

Larger scale disasters include tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, explosions, and acts of terrorism—all of which require skilled expertise in the cleanup process. When something big happens, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency issue a mission or task assignment, and a team is dispatched. Some of the high profile events Environmental Restoration is been involved in include:

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Sandy

the Joplin tornado

the Greensburg tornado

several Missouri floods, including 1993

the Columbia Shuttle explosion

the BP oil spill

the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks

Anthrax decontamination at the Senate Hart Building in Washington, DC

“The World Trade Center site could be compared to a semi-truck cleanup” says Dennis Greaney, president of Environmental Restoration. “But instead of two hours to clean up, it was more like two months and you send your most senior guys who have tons of experience. Ground Zero was a lot of asbestos and hazardous material that needed to be cleaned up, and we had the expertise to do it.”

When the World Trade Center towers fell, hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic debris were spread across Lower Manhattan. Environmental Restoration immediately dispatched a team to NYC for cleanup.

When the Shuttle Columbia exploded above Texas in 2003, the recovery of hydrazine across two states required a specialized team from Environmental Restoration. Teams are highly trained to respond to any possibility, no matter how unlikely.

Those are the high profile cases. But what about debris that’s left behind from floods and tornados and heavy storms? The household cleaners and paints left among the rubble can’t go into landfills.

“We do disaster response specific to debris and hazardous waste removal,” says David Brinkmeyer. “The staff at ER has been through extensive OSHA training to be able to respond to any situation in a safe manner.”

“Safety is out number one priority,” Dennis says. “We make sure our folks are properly trained and ready to go and respond wherever we are needed.”

Jobs with the company range from engineering, chemists, project management, CDL truck drivers, and many more. The company is always looking for good workers who are willing to take on the demanding jobs required by this line of work. Traveling across the country is one of the benefits of being part of the team. However, Dennis thinks his workforce in Missouri is among the best.

“I don’t say this just because we are located here, but the Midwest has the best labor force I’ve worked with,” says Dennis of the 410 employees nationwide. “Honestly, we have some great workers in our company and we wouldn’t be the success we are without them. We do a lot of niche things and need the staff to support that.”

When Environmental Restoration isn’t cleaning up after disasters, the company is constantly bidding on clean up and remediation projects.

ER can collect the waste and debris from a site and then work with a local waste collector, such as Republic Services, to dispose of it. They can also work with communities to do curbside pick up of specialized waste.

“Every effort is made to recycle or salvage any usable items and minimize what goes into the landfill,” David says.

The crew that works with local cleanup consists of around 65 people, including 25 on household hazardous waste and 40 on debris. These crews spend a lot of time cleaning up “orphan containers,” items that have been picked up by a flood and washed up somewhere that they need to be picked up and taken away.

The employees at Environmental Restoration seem to be just fine being silent heroes in the community, cleaning up what has been left behind in the wake of accidents and disasters. But when you need them, they want you to know they’ll be there and ready to get to work.

Like this:

Related

5 comments

Too bad that these ass clowns don’t pay their help what they are worth. They expect you to be on call 24/7 for a base rate of $12 per hour and no overtime is permitted unless you are “billable” , only then is your wage adjusted because the federal government dictates your wages “Davis-Bacon”. One of the reasons for the shitty base pay is they have several satellite office that fail to produce revenue for the company, therefor they are leaching off the revenue that the top 5 offices continually bring in. I have seen them let key staff walk away rather than try to make them reasonable offers to stay. Sure there are plenty of other companies that treat their help this way, but let’s not me ER out to be the HERO, they hire random people with minimal experience, put them through an in 40 Hazwoper and call them remediation techs, only putting inexperienced people lives in danger because of the lack of experience and training and for what???? You guessed it, MORE PROFITS!!!
Don’t take my word for it, many of former and current employees will attest to this.

Hi ‘Stephen’. I don’t want to get into a debate in a public forum with an disgruntled ex-employee, but for sake of defending my employees, and our company, I will provide some accuracy to your post. First, we pay overtime for all hourly employees, regardless of whether or not they are ‘billable’. Because of the nature of our emergency response business line, we pay also overtime for salaried field staff as well, but only for billable hours. Its not difficult to understand, but by your comment, you didn’t. Second, we are the largest EPA emergency response contractor in the US. Under our government contracts we work under both the Service Contract Act (SCA) and the Davis Contract Act (DBA). By law, we must, and we do, pay the appropriate hourly pay depending on what rate applies (which is decided by the Department of Labor). Next, we offer our clients nationwide coverage, and because we are an emergency response provider, we must respond quickly. Because of this we do indeed have ‘satellite offices’ in some remote parts of the US. While you see them as ‘leaching’, we see them as commitments to our client base. Next, I believe we offer the finest labor force in our industry. We do offer employment opportunities to inexperienced new hires. We offer them job training, and all employees work under a stringent safety program with an amazing track record (EMR of .71). We also have many managers, field, and office staff who have been with us since the company was formed 20 years ago (and we employ many women and men who I have worked with for 35 years). We are only as good as our labor force, and we are exceptional. Finally, our work is difficult, and we ask a lot of our employees. We travel, and we spend significant time away from home. From that comes a comradery among our staff. Sometimes we have someone who doesn’t fit in, can’t handle the work, or has found a job they like more, and elects to leave. That’s ok, and we wish them the best. On this occasion its apparent we have an angry ex-employee using an assumed name to make inaccurate public comment and accusations based on ignorance. The readers can judge your integrity. If you’d like to have a civil conversation, my door is always open to hear and understand your issues, and improve our company (even as an ex-employee). I wish you well in your future endeavors and new job. Say hi to the guys.

I absolutely loved working for e.r great pay wish I was still with them I do how ever feel sorry for the previous poster they probbly would have gave you another job if you would not have tried to publicly shame them for your mistakes